For several decades Michel Odent has been instrumental in influencing the history of childbirth  and health research.

As a practitioner he developed the maternity unit at Pithiviers Hospital in France in the 1960s and '70s. He is familiarly known as the obstetrician who introduced the concept of birthing pools and home-like birthing rooms. His approach has been featured in eminent medical journals such as Lancet, and in TV documentaries such as the BBC film Birth Reborn. With six midwives he was in charge of about one thousand births a year and could achieve ideal statistics with low rates of intervention. After his hospital career he practiced home birth.

*adapted from FabBooks.com

This "breech birth protocol" involves no intervention what so ever in the first stage of labor, leaving the woman free and *naturally active*.

In his book *Birth Reborn* he writes that his only intervention is to:

"insist on the supported squatting position for delivery, since it is the most mechanically efficient. It reduces the likelihood of our having to pull the baby out, and is the best way to minimize the delay between the delivery of the baby's umbilicus and the baby's head . . . would never risk a breech delivery with the mother in a dorsal or semi-seated position.  If, on the other hand, contractions in the first stage labor are painful and inefficient and dilation does not progress, we must quickly dispense with the idea of vaginal delivery. Otherwise we face the danger of a last minute "point of no return" when, after emergence of the baby's buttocks, it is too late to switch strategies and decide on a caesarean. However, although we always perform caesareans when first stage labor is difficult and the situation is not improving, most breech births in our clinic do end up as vaginal deliveries."

Odent, M, Birth Reborn, Souvenir Press, 1984